How Are New Shards Formed?

Core Technicals
#1

Hi,

so I really jus figured out about QuarkChain when I was looking up blockchains with sharding technology. I would first like to start off by stating that I am interesting in sharding tech but I am by no means an expert in any form of technology so keep that in mind when answering my question down below.

I would like to know how new shards are formed on the quarkchain mainnet. I am asking to see whether the forming process of a new shard is centralized or decentralized. Can you explain how its form and give your opinion on whether or not the process is centralized or decentralized ? I know some chains where the company picks like how shards are formed.

#2

I am not quite sure what you mean “new shards are formed”. Do you mean creating a new shard (e.g., current we have 8 shards, so the next one is 9) with a customized consensus (e.g, PoS) and a different token other than QKC? Depending on the values of the parameters, we may have a more accurate answer.

At the moment, creating a shard generally requires a governance proposal and implements a hard fork (as Ethereum does!). However, when the mainnet already supports the new shard with its parameters (e.g., create a new shard with PoW+Ethash+QKC), then we may be able to create a shard in a complete decentralized way.